IN days gone by, grocery shopping was all of these things. A trip to the local supermarket meant filling your trolley with food items and little else. Shop at a supermarket these days and, let's face it, you don't need to shop anywhere else. You don't need to visit your local bookshop, your local music store, your chemist or your local electrical store - or your local anything.

No, it's all available under one roof at your local foodstore - sorry, supermarket - and all you need is a trolley and a car boot big enough to take it all.

According to the Federation of Small Business (FSB), doing it all at your local supermarket means that you don't do it elsewhere, particularly not in many local town centres which are in decline.

FSB commissioned a report which found that in three Scottish towns where a Tesco was built, a significant amount of shoppers had changed their shopping habits. Since the arrival of a supermarket in Alloa, Dingwall and Dumfries, town centre retail floorspace had reduced and all had dropped down UK shopping rankings.

The recent collapse of Bargain Books lends weight to FSB's argument. One of the reasons cited for the book chain's collapse was its inability to compete with supermarket book sales. How could it compete? After all, what specialist retailer can contend with the purchasing power and muscle of a leading supermarket, or cross subsidise and loss lead in the way that only a major food retailer can?

This, however, is at odds with the Competition Commission's findings on the supermarket sector, which found the sector was a force for good in helping to drive down consumer prices.

The force for good argument also extends to investment and jobs. An example is Asda's recent announcement that it plans to create 8000 jobs building 18 new stores UKwide, including three new megastores that will create 700 new jobs in Scotland.

Faced with that kind of economic leverage, what Council planning committee is going to say no to a new supermarket?

But here's the rub - generally speaking, retail planning consents are highly valuable, highly sought after and hard to come by. For example, consider any of the outof-town retail schemes of recent years and you'll be hard pressed to name any that got their consent without a fight.

Supermarkets, however, don't seem to face the same fight, even though in essence they've become major out-of-town retailers in their own right, occupying huge floor areas and selling not just food but everything from laptops to lawn mowers.

In planning terms, then, the playing field isn't level. But it never is when David meets Goliath. At the moment, the supermarket giants are safe because, from the Government's perspective, they're delivering jobs and contributing to low inflation.

However, the Government should also ensure that new developments seek to complement rather than conflict with existing town centres. If the supermarkets can do that, then we can all put away our slings.